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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26565154">The Constant</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/'>Anonymous</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII (Video Game 1997), Final Fantasy VII Remake (Video Game 2020), Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Canon Compliant, Complicated Relationships, Dubious Consent, Edge of Creation, Enemy Lovers, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Mind Control, Non-Consensual Bondage, Obsession, Pining, Puppet Cloud Strife, Time Travel</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 10:08:25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,688</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26565154</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Sephiroth decides to bring Cloud back to the Edge of Creation, in order to contemplate the nature of their connection.<br/><br/><strong>Canon Compliant-Divergent AU.</strong><br/><kbd></kbd></p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Sephiroth/Cloud Strife</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>192</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Anonymous</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>The Constant</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>There it is: the simmering, hateful gaze on his adversary’s angelic face, framed by a halo of wayward golden hair. The same incandescent glare from that fateful day in Nibelheim. Burning with ire. Suffused with suffering. It is the last thing he recalls seeing, before plummeting into darkness.</p><p>Sometimes, the scar still stings, from where Cloud had driven Zack’s sword into him. Physical sensations grow more vivid, on the days he spends inhabiting a corporeal vessel; an unfamiliar and jarring feeling. The phantom pain exists in his mind only, yet weaves its way through his borrowed body.</p><p>A clean cut, piercing right through. <em>Does it ache equally, the scar he dealt in return?</em></p><p>Reaching out with the tendrils of their telepathic connection, there’s the low throb of painful memories. Masamune, bright and silver. The agony as it impaled the boy’s unenhanced body. Flashes of other memories he was not present for: the sharp sting of a needle as they sutured the wound. The acid green of mako inside a glass barrier. The blow should have killed him, but it did not.</p><p>His mistake had been to turn his back on the enemy.</p><p>If only he had known who it was, then.</p><p>But there’s something else. Fear. It widens those blue eyes just a fraction. Causes the blond eyebrows to crease with trepidation. The reaction pleases him. Sephiroth smiles with a predatory satisfaction, and the determined look of loathing only deepens.</p><p>Cloud’s blood is the same as his now. Calling out for reunion. They are drawn together, inevitably. The numbered vessel he manipulates at the moment is nearly empty; a mere husk. Easy, though not enjoyable, to control. There’s no struggle. No will to press down.</p><p><em>Sleep,</em> he says with his mind. There’s no need for spells. Cloud’s will is resisting the suggestion, fighting against him, suddenly becoming aware of the psychic intrusion. He bears down with his influence, and the word whispers again between Cloud’s ears, <em>sleep</em>. Swooping forward, he catches the Buster sword and the unconscious body in one graceful movement.</p><p>His black wing unfurls, curling around them. The room is suddenly empty, as a single black feather flutters slowly, soundlessly, onto the wooden floor.</p><p>//</p><p>Cloud’s body is lithe and pale, looking all the more so, as Sephiroth slips the black collar around his neck. The leather decoration is something new, fashioned from imagination. The other restraints he recreates from old memories—designed to hold down someone with mako-infused veins. A flexible yet surprisingly strong material, contrasting starkly against ivory skin.</p><p>Clutching the slender wrists together, he binds them with black cuffs behind Cloud’s curved back. His enemy looks so lovely like this: Vulnerable and subdued. Beautiful in both his strength and weakness.</p><p>He buckles a strap below the chest, briefly touching the whitened scar tissue there. Traces the same spot next to the curve of his spine. They are the only blemishes to be found on the smooth flesh: A symbol of their bound fates. Sephiroth removes his gloves, pulling Cloud’s head into his lap. Presses a finger along the furrowed brow. Strokes the freckled cheeks, until his captive begins to stir from his stupor.</p><p>Inky lashes blink with confusion. Cloud’s eyes focus onto his, bares his teeth at the sight of slitted pupils, and instantly jerks away. The effort doesn’t get him far, chained into the cold, hard ground as he is.</p><p>Embarrassment colors Cloud’s face as he realizes his state of undress. “Where are my clothes?” he hisses. Tension ripples along his thighs as he presses them together in an attempt at modesty.</p><p>“I like you better like this.” Sephiroth’s lips curve with amusement. And disdain, of course. His feelings towards Cloud are always a complicated mixture of antithetical concepts.</p><p>Cloud wrestles with the thick cuffs around his wrists, but the futility of the movements merely indents into his flesh a series of bright pink weals.</p><p>“I thought you would ask for your weapon back first,” he intones with an air of malice. A clumsy, heavy-handed blade, and yet so skillfully handled by his opponent. Not quite skillfully enough, yet.</p><p>This time, Cloud doesn’t bother to ask where they are. They have been here before—a place where time simply ceases to exist. The air around them is so cold and vast, where stars that died long ago still flicker with light. In this place, Sephiroth can wield his power fully, rather than allow it to become muddled by the weak pieces of mindless flesh that serve as his conduits.</p><p>He grips Cloud’s chin between his thumb and index finger, relishing the look of hatred that forms on his face.</p><p>“I’ll kill you. I’ll kill you <em>again</em>,” he glowers. It’s a promise he knows Cloud can keep.</p><p>“You already did,” Sephiroth coos sweetly, dragging his thumb across the softness of his enemy’s lower lip. “You’ve killed me many times.” Sent him into the Lifestream, over and over. The resentment that he holds onto prevents the planet from absorbing him. For that, he is thankful.</p><p>The knowledge. The power. The ascension beyond mere mortality. All because a weak and furious child was betrayed by his madness.</p><p>Cloud stares back at him, confused, recoiling from his touch. He does not remember that which lies ahead, nor what lay in the past.</p><p>Almost fondly, he treasures the destructive feelings with Cloud at their core. Sometimes, that is all that remains, when he senses the pieces of himself fading in and out of reach. Here, the fragments coalesce, and he feels solid enough to reclaim the memories.</p><p>Sephiroth peers into large blue-teal eyes, rimmed with anger, glowing with mako. They were once completely blue. Eyes that he had never noticed back then, when Cloud was just a lowly, idealistic cadet.</p><p>His anchor. His constant.</p><p>Cloud winces as Sephiroth’s mind reaches into his. A shrill noise cries out from his consciousness, attempting to block out anything foreign or unpleasant. He traverses past the walls of false memories, pushing deeper, until he reaches the ones that are buried.</p><p>A grey, merciless sky. A face that was once unbearably warm, staring blankly and streaked with crimson. Unbidden, the wretched feeling of sympathy stirs within him, from whatever humanity is left in his soul. Death, in some ways, feels like abandonment.</p><p>“Stop,” Cloud spits out through clenched teeth.</p><p>“You’ve forgotten so many things, Cloud.” He gently strokes the soft blond spikes atop the bent head, but his foe tenses beneath his touch. Mentally shattered into pieces. His little mirror.</p><p>A puppet is more useful when broken.</p><p>He enjoys all the incarnations of Cloud. The young boy who had dreamed of him at night, staring at his flowing silver hair through a grainy television; The traumatized one trapped inside a bath of mako; The splintered puppet who bent so easily to his will; The grieving warrior who had bested him again and again.</p><p>The one who had finally allowed Sephiroth to claim him as a lover, coiled and writhing underneath him with reluctant pleasure; The one whose every slash and parry he could predict with his eyes closed; The one whose mind he knew more intimately than his own, yet somehow still managed to surprise him.</p><p>The one who had lain in his arms begging, <em>Let me die</em>, as if an eternity together was unbearable. As if there were not other worlds to visit and conquer, when this one and its inhabitants finally withered.</p><p>“Why refuse me? Must you be so obstinate?” Sephiroth sighs, disappointed. They are inextricably linked, and yet <em>this</em> Cloud still refuses to accept that.</p><p>“I hate you,” Cloud seethes. Hatred. Love. They are merely two sides of the same coin: inseparable halves of the same object. Hatred is what binds together their intertwined fates. In Sephiroth’s mind, in all its divinity and enlightenment, there is no distinction.</p><p>He had cared so much for this Planet. For his friends. <em>His</em> Cloud. Only in hindsight does he realize that this was the fount upon which Cloud drew his strength: the intensity of his desire to protect them. To preserve the things he cherished.</p><p>Bitterly, he had realized that he was not one of them. Not yet.</p><p>
  <em>You have to live.</em>
</p><p>He would help save this planet, if that is what it took. Cloud had always accused him of being obtuse, of being someone who couldn’t possibly <em>understand</em> what he wanted. Even after Sephiroth had unturned every stone in his mind.</p><p>
  <em>I will not end.</em>
</p><p>Limp in his arms, Sephiroth lets the thrum of his influence fill Cloud’s mind with a rush of warm calm. Easing his pain. Letting the erroneous memories fall back into place, just for now.</p><p>
  <em>Nor will I have you end.</em>
</p><p>Fingertips caress the pale hips of a body that does not yet know him. Hips that once arched into his touch, unraveling against their pleasured union. He remembers the sheen of sweat-soaked blond hair, the blunt nails gripping his back. The cry against his ear, as the only companion deserving of him had come undone.</p><p>They had lived in each other’s minds, long before the first time Cloud relinquished himself to him. A consuming feeling, each time Cloud faced his various vessels, and <em>won</em>. Every dance just as heated, played out against the clash of their blades.</p><p>It had always been a battle of wills, and none had been as strong as his own, none except for Cloud’s—as long as he had something to fight for.</p><p>Suffering molds them both, placing them on the path to transcendence. Their destinies are no longer immutable.</p><p>So long as Cloud lives, he would always have a way to return.</p><p>Sephiroth rests his lips against his puppet’s slack mouth, whispering onto them.</p><p>“You will not abandon me this time.”</p><p>Despite eventually acquiescing to his embrace, the Cloud he knew had never forgiven him. And yet, he never failed to crawl back to his side, where he belongs. Unable to deny their inevitable connection.
</p><p>His rival summons only enough willpower to bite into the flesh of his lower lip, before surrendering control once more. The kiss tastes of blood and familiarity.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Decided to write some Sefikura after reading <a href="https://thelifestream.net/novels-novellas/on-the-way-to-a-smile-lifestream-black-and-lifestream-white/">what Sephiroth has been up to in the Lifestream</a> and <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/silentsaint/pseuds/silentsaint">silentsaint's</a> excellent "enemies in love" pieces.</p><p>I usually only pair Sephiroth/Cloud in a romantic sense when it's a sane Sephiroth, but this became a twisted romantic interpretation of Remake Sephiroth's behavior.</p><hr/><p>As always, I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments. ❤️ I enjoy chatting about these characters, FF7, ideas, fanfic, and writing, so don't be afraid to share your thoughts!</p><p>Kudos are always appreciated too.<br/>Thank you for reading!</p><hr/><p>
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